Cisco Flips 6,500 Workers Into The Unemployment Line

Cisco employees are apparently paying for the company’s ill-advised decision to spend $600 million to buy the company that made Flip video cameras. Cisco is reducing its workforce by 16 percent, cutting 6,500 jobs, including 2,100 early retirement volunteers, and losing other employees by selling a business.

The bloodletting is related to a drastic change in direction the company announced in April, when it shut down the Flip camera and streamlined its corporate structure, predicting it would lay off a vastly underestimated 550 employees by the end of July.

The company is attempting to cut $1 billion off of annual operating expenses with the job reductions. It will also sell a Mexico-based manufacturing facility to Chinese company Foxconn.